Recession signs are here 经济衰退

There are multiple signals of a recession, and they are all flashing green now.

Well, he said we were in a recession back in March, and the US economy has skidded along for the past two quarters. So where are we now? In the Economic Cycle with me now Lakshman Achuthan, managing director of Accurate Economic Research Institute, thanks for being with us.

Thanks for having me back.

And this is a call you've made a lot about what we are recently and it's likely right a lot of people are starting to agree with you, but the question is we have not seen two back-to-back quarters of contracting growth that is the traditional definition of a recession.

Yeah, it's it. . . what that is really is it is a rule of thumb. That was and I was researching this because I've heard so much about it. It came out in an article in 1974 where there was a laundry list of ways of knowing about a recession for the men in the street, and one out of like ten thinks was two negative quarters back-to-back, because it usually happens around a recession. What you find is that that's not the way you define a recession because a recession is really a sequence of events, and so you need to look at the sequence of indicators. Essentially what you're looking for is for sales to fall, so broad sales is a key indicator, which then pulls down production ,so industrial production is an indicator that you use to define a recession, which then hits jobs because if productions falls then jobs are gonna fall. You don't need to hire that many people and then wages or income comes down. That's the last piece, so it's the sequence, and then if wages come down, then it goes to the front of line, and people can't buy that much. So sale falls and that s how you get a recession, so the two negative quarters I think is something you often see there in a recession.

Not always.

But not always, so 2001 for example, (yeah) definitely a recession we almost lost 3 million jobs, we lopped off half of the value of the NASDAQ, a lot of grief around there and I don't think anyone disputes that it was a recession. You never had two negative quarters of back to back GDP.

Yeah, and correct me if I'm wrong.We're dealing with inflation at the, you know, fastest rate in 17 years (That's correct. ) Wages are not a 5. 6 percent like inflation is ,and we're dealing with more than 400, 000 jobless claims last week, we're dealing with all of this. . . going on so, who's to say right now that we aren't in a recession?

Well, I think, you know, some, er, a cheerleader of the economy for one reason or another, some institutions who wanna do that, if you are bullish, and you wanna have a, certainly, you might have a certain vested interest in arguing that. What we're trying to do is just get it right where, you know, where are we in the business cycle and what's the likelihood of a turning point ahead. Now we've already called the peak. I think when the dust settles, you are gonna see more in negative quarters of GDP, they're gonna get revised down next year. And looking forward what we very concerned about is any sign of a recovery, and that hasn't really appeared yet. So you know the bad news is we are in a recession. The good news is it's been kind of shallow so far, the not so good news or ongoing concern is that we don't see the foundations for a recovery.

when we look around the globe, outside the United States, we see this economic weakness really creeping up in the countries we heard from the Euro zone like contraction in GDP, the worst probably we've seen there since the 1990s. How much is that going to affect any recovery in our country here in the US?

Ah. . yeah, it is. . that's a great question. The global slowing is punctuated by recession ,we went in first, we don' t see a recovery yet. Europe and other places are following us down, and this is a problem for the US because of exports, OK?

A couple of things have happened that are negative for our exports outlook in the quarters ahead. One is that the dollar has started to strengthen because that the rest of the world looks weaker. And the other is, is that as the rest. . as the rest of the world slows their demand for our goods is gonna ebb a little bit. So the exports which has been keeping us at a shallow recession is going to be kind of less of a positive for the US going forward.